One Last Lesson by Iain Cameron Page B

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    Rachel Jones bought the car only three weeks before but already it was starting to feel like the best she’d driven. A petrol-head from an early age, she often spent her weekends hanging around garage forecourts looking at sports cars, trying to convince the macho salesman that a mere woman might be a serious customer if only he would let her take one out for a spin.
    It was unfortunate that her salary as a journalist with the Brighton Argus did not allow her to follow her passion with any degree of gusto, but by working additional overtime and the judicious juggling of her clothes and eating-out budget, it occasionally provided sufficient funds to splash out, as was the case with this two-year old roadster.
    When she first met Angus Henderson, the owner of a much-neglected four year-old Audi estate with several odd bits of boat engine in the back, she was afraid their relationship would flounder before it started, as he showed no interest in cars beyond using them for daily transport, so how could he really understand her obsession?
    To her complete surprise, he n ever once complained about the hours she spent reading motoring magazines or wandering around motor shows and garage forecourts, other than to remark that if ever spotted by his boss, it would be the excuse he was looking for to move him to Traffic.
    For the last couple of weeks, she had been tied to her desk writing articles and features, including one about Shoreham Power Station that would be in the paper later in the week, an update to the Country Diary, including a weekly column of the jobs needing doing in the garden and what delights could be found in hedgerows and fields at this time of year, and a speculative one about the grants available to landowners for planting trees, which her boss promised to put in the paper the next time he had a space to fill.
    She was just leaving the South of England Showground where once a year the fields on either side of the access road, the large barns dotted to left and right, and the huge exhibition halls and pavilions were transformed into the South of England Agricultural Show.
    In early June, two and a half months from now, h undreds of exhibitors from all over the south would arrive here to set up stalls, offering everything from apple juice to tractors, from home-made jam to locally brewed ales, in a three-day extravaganza of dog trials, horse jumping, chainsaw skills and other country pursuits, that attracted tens of thousands of visitors to this rural part of West Sussex.
    In her role as countryside and environmental reporter, it was her job to put together a feature on the show which was always published a few weeks before it started, but she decided to meet some members of the committee ahead of time, to give her readers something to look forward to in the dismal winter months.
    It had been a good meeting and she managed to fill two pages of A4 with notes and if she couldn’t make a good half-page article out of that lot, she might as well hand back her NUJ card now. When it was published, she hoped her readers would find it interesting but it would also go to prove to her boss that her little jaunt into the countryside did have a valid business purpose and wasn’t just an excuse to try out her new roadster.
    She called Angus. The previous evening, they met at nine but as he was tired and didn’t feel like driving into Brighton, they decided to walk to the nearest pub. The apartment block where she lived in Hove called Ashdown, was built on land owned by Sussex County Cricket Club, and as her flat enjoyed extensive views over the cricket ground, she could watch any match from the comfort of her own living room. Alas it was not for free as she and all the other similarly sited apartment owners, were obliged to buy an annual membership for the cricket club as a condition of signing the lease.
    When ever he was involved in a major investigation, he tried to hide the pressure he was under by